Churchill's Spy Files

by Nigel West

  Rosenstreter picked on Hoppe firstly because, being financially independent, he was unlikely to keep asking for money and would be more free to work for them in the Argentine than if he were a man with a business to look after. Lastly, Hoppe was a motor expert and knew the roads and coastline of the Argentine well. Hoppe thinks Rosenstreter heard possibly from Rienhard Schroeder about his (Hoppe’s) knowledge of the coastline, but this is a guess only on Hoppe’s part. Hoppe states emphatically that he was never taught to communicate in secret writing, nor did he know or receive instruction in wireless transmission. He says he knows nothing about microphotography beyond what he has read or seen in shops. He points out always that the time that elapsed between his first meeting with Rosenstreter and his departure from Germany was much too short to have enabled him to receive any useful knowledge on these subjects. His mission, had he carried it out, he says, would not have involved any correspondence with Germany and he admits to no cover addresses.

  During his examination here, Hoppe has repeatedly stated that from the time of his first contact with Rosenstreter he had no intention of carrying out the latter’s plan. To support this declaration he mentions the hiding of the sealed tin given him by Rosenstreter. Hoppe concealed a packet, handed to him in Bilbao by an emissary of Rosenstreter, in a junk room on board the Monte Albertia. When asked what then his intentions were, Hoppe said that he would have betrayed the whole matter to the Argentine government, after he had obtained information as to the time and place of arrival of the U-boat. This would presumably have meant that Hoppe would have perforce, in order to get that information, carried out Rosenstreter’s instructions up to a certain point at least. On the one hand, Hoppe was to benefit considerably if he performed the job expected of him by the Germans, namely by a monetary reward and subsequent commissions on the purchase of land for his Nazi employers. On the other hand, by betraying contraband to the Argentine government to the tune of 10,000,000 Marks, he would be entitled by Argentine law to 10% of that sum.

  Hoppe remained in custody until October 1945 when he was repatriated, together with Oscar Liehr, on the SS Deseado, which sailed from Liverpool for Buenos Aires.

  * * *

  José Olivera del Rio was a highly motivated ship’s telegraphist whose Spanish vessel, the SS Habana, en route from Buenos Aires to Teneriffe, was stopped at sea in October 1943 by a Dutch patrol vessel, the Johann Mauritius, operating from Curaçao. The initial identification of Olivera had come in late 1941 from a double-agent in Buenos Aires, Jesus Aguilar, and it was only when it sounded as though the courier was likely to be carrying codebooks, secret correspondence and a quantity of some mysterious metal to Spain that the decision was taken to intercept him. On 7 November Olivera was flown from Gibraltar to Lyneham and transferred to Camp 020 for questioning.

  Under interrogation, and after some initial resistance, Olivera made a very full statement and described how he had been recruited by the Abwehr after he had served as a radio operator attached to a squadron of Junkers bombers, part of the Condor Legion, during the Spanish Civil War. There he had worked with Otto Hinrischen, who was later to stay in Bilbao on behalf of the Abwehr. Hinrischen had suggested he collect information on Allied shipping and act as a courier, and they had used another contact, Carlos Imaz, as an intermediary. Unfortunately, at the time of his arrest, no codebooks had been recovered, and it was not until his final confession at Camp 020 that his hiding place was revealed. He had concealed a bag of material behind the reflector of his ship’s starboard running lights, and when this was retrieved the contents proved to be of exceptional value.

  When asked about Diego Beltrán-Leiro, whom he never realised had also been detained at Camp 020, Olivera acknowledged that he too was in the pay of the Germans, but refused to say anything more about anyone else. This, nevertheless, was further evidence that was used to good effect against Beltrán-Leiro. Olivera also admitted that he had been on the payroll of the Italian Servizio Internazionale Militaire (SIM) which had recruited him in August 1942 during a visit to Seville while he was working aboard the Motimar, and given the code name RODOLFO. He was invited by the local Italian consul to collect information during his imminent voyage to Baltimore, and to obtain a copy of Lloyds’ Register of Shipping.

  When his ship returned in October from Baltimore and Philadelphia, Olivera had submitted a report to Hinrischen in Bilbao, and then the following month gave the same material to his Italian contact in Seville. His last voyage on the Motimar was in December to Philadephia, returning to Cádiz in January. He signed off the Motimar in February 1943, and joined the Habana as second officer in May in Bilbao, bound for New Orleans. His ship returned to Barcelona in July, and then sailed for Buenos Aires in August.

  As for Jesus Aguilar, the double-agent who had given the tip about Olivera, he was a cabin steward on the Cabo de Buena Esperanza, and had proved useful in alerting the DSO in Trinidad to passengers whom he had been paid by the Abwehr to keep an eye on. He and the ship’s pastry chef, Bernardino Solana, were low-level agents who were typical of those working for the Germans on the route between Argentina and Europe. Some were employed to carry messages and compile shipping reports, especially in enemy ports, while others, like Aguilar, fulfilled the role of minder, keeping an eye on important passengers. It had been Aguilar, supported by ISOS intercepts, who had alerted MI5 to the mission of Andrés Blay, Paraguay’s consul-general in Barcelona. Blay had developed a good trade in selling his country’s passports and visas to desperate refugees, but had also acquired some financial problems. Before they embarked at Bilbao, Aguilar knew Blay was working for the Abwehr, so when the Cabo de Buena Esperanza reached Trinidad in September 1942 he was detained. Although nothing incriminating was found in his cabin, when Blay himself was searched, despite his protests of his diplomatic status, a small packet was found stitched behind his fly-buttons. Inside was a letter of introduction addressed to the Spanish consul-general in Buenos Aires, seeking him to supply Blay with courier facilities, and signed by Joaquin Baticón, another Ybarra Line steward and Abwehr agent already known to MI5. Blay was promptly shipped to England for interrogation at Camp 020 where the questions, based on ISOS material, proved rather more difficult to evade, and he made a confession, naming his Abwehr contact as Horst Müller of the German consulate-general in Barcelona.

  The real significance of Blay’s statement was the light it shed on the activities of the Spanish intelligence service, which was known to be extremely active in Buenos Aires, although little was known about another organisation believed to be Franco’s personal intelligence service, which concentrated on political issues.

  Baticón himself was arrested in Trinidad in February 1943 and his statement, combined with Blay’s confession and ISOS information, led to the arrest of three more Ybarra stewards between June and August 1943 and, most significantly, to the capture of a valued prize, Manuel Perez, the Spanish police attaché in Buenos Aires.

  * * *

  On 6 December 1943 Diego Beltrán-Leiro, a wireless operator on the SS Monte Monjuich, sailing from Buenos Aires, was arrested when his ship was stopped at the Strairs of Gibraltar by the anti-submarine trawler HMS Lady Hogarth and escorted into the dockyard. A fortnight later Beltrán-Leiro was flown to Whitchurch for interrogation at Camp 020. According to Herbert Hart’s analysis of the ISOS traffic, Beltrán-Leiro had been recruited by the Abwehr two years earlier, and when his vessel was rummaged some incriminating documents and mircodots, some of them dealing with secret radio-location apparatus, were recovered from a ventilator. His SD controller, Hauptsturmführer Johannes Becker, considered Beltrán his ‘best and most trustworthy man’, apart from a courier code-named BRAVO. Four rolls of photographic film, amounting to eighty-eight frames, were also retrieved from inside the ship’s wireless transmitter, to which only Beltrán-Leiro had access. When his cache of papers was studied in London it revealed details, including code names and cover addresses, of some forty hitherto unknown German spies in South Ame
rica. There were also photographs of various Germans, including Becker and another character, Hans Harnisch, and a lengthy report on the Hellmuth affair, blaming various members of the embassy staff for the fiasco.

  Quite apart from the ISOS evidence, MI5 had acquired a statement from Olivero incriminating Beltrán-Leiro, which served to settle the matter of his seizure on the high seas by the Admiralty upon his return to Europe. When questioned the 23-year-old Beltrán-Leiro, code-named GORRA and usually based in Vigo, immediately offered a confession. Formerly a radio operator in the Spanish navy, Beltrán-Leiro admitted having been recruited by the Germans in November 1941 and had successfully completed six missions. For this he had received 1,000 pesetas from an intermediary, Carlos Fuentes, later identified as an alias adopted by a known Abwehr officer, Fritz Furch. SIS would eventually identify BRAVO as Cuevas Mins, a seaman serving on the SS Rita Garcia.

  Beltrán-Leiro was kept in custody until August 1945, when he was escorted to Portsmouth to embark on HMS Glasgow for his release in Gibraltar.

  * * *

  In August 1943 Basil Batos, a Greek Communist and journalist, was expelled from Portuguese East Africa, having been identified in ISOS traffic as an Axis spy engaged in the collecting of shipping information for the Italian consul Umberto Campini, which was delivered to a bookshop, Cardoso & Cardoso, in the rua Salazar. ISOS revealed that since July 1942 Batos had receved £15 a month for his material, supplied under the code name LEO. He had also been seen associating with a German, Alois Muellner, although ISOS suggested a link with Otto Werz or the German consul, Paul Tromke. The SIS representative in Lourenço Marques, Malcolm Muggeridge,2 tipped off the local police about Batos’s alleged communism, and this resulted in his expulsion, ostensibly to Turkey via Egypt. Accordingly, when Batos reached Mombasa by the Imperial Airways flying-boat Castor he was arrested by the Kenyan police and questioned at Nairobi prison.

  Aged 52, Batos was married to an Englishwoman, Mary O’Neill, had lived in New York, and had a 23-year-old son, Richard, in the US Navy. He reached Glasgow on the P&O liner Rampura in December and was escorted to Camp 020, where he was interrogated. However, when questioned Batos denied any involvement with espionage and, in the absence of a confession, was kept in custody until July 1945, when he was served with a deportation order and flown to Athens.

  * * *

  At the time Petrie presented a brief account of Guy Wijckaert’s arrival in England he had only been in British custody at Camp 020 for a few days, and Churchill was never given the full story.

  When Wijckaert turned up at the Belgian consulate in Barcelona he admitted that he had been recruited by the Germans, but insisted that he had pretended to collaborate as a means to escape from the occupation. Certainly his role as a spy had been compromised already, but when he was questioned he made significant omissions relating to his intended Abwehr assignment, to undertake sabotage in England, Canada or Africa, and was untruthful about the payments he had received. After a period of interrogation he reluctantly revealed three cover addresses and admitted to the large sums he had been paid. He also conceded that after he had visited the Barcelona consulate he had mailed a letter to an intermediary to inform the Germans that he had begun his journey to England. In his defence Wijckaert claimed that he had adopted this course to ensure continued payments to his father in Belgium, but his lack of candour meant he would remain in detention for the next two years.

  * * *

  LIPSTICK was Josef Terradellas, a Catalan separatist who was sent by the Abwehr to England in November 1942. He declared his mission and his secret writing instructions to the SIS station in Madrid before his departure, and was managed until December 1944 by MI5, although his political activism became increasingly embarrassing to his handlers.

  * * *

  FREAK was Marquis Frano de Bona, an aristocrat from Dubrovnik and an old family friend of the Popovs. De Bona had undergone an Abwehr training course in the use of secret ink and Morse, and had also been provided with a radio transmitter that he handed over when he was welcomed to Madrid by Dusan Popov. The Marquis eventually reached London via Gibraltar in December 1943, where he was assigned the cryptonym FREAK by MI5, and began using his wireless to signal his German controllers as soon as Popov returned from Lisbon the following month. Holding the rank of commander in the Yugoslav navy, de Bona joined the King’s entourage, and maintained radio contact under MI5’s supervision with the Abwehr in Paris, and then Hamburg, until May 1944, acting as Popov’s wireless operator. On 24 February 1944 Liddell recorded in his diary:

  FREAK has got through satisfactorily. The fact that the enemy put two stations on to the job of receiving his traffic confirms that they regard it as of the greatest importance.

  After the war de Bona moved to Trieste, and he died in 1991.

  10

  TENTH REPORT,

  1 FEBRUARY 1944

  In this report, covering three months of MI5 activity, Petrie makes oblique references to Oswald Job, earlier identified in Chapter 8 by name, who was mentioned as having been sentenced to hang at his trial on 24 January 1944, and the two Gibraltar saboteurs, Luis Cordon-Cuenca and José Muñoz. The case of Hellmuth, previously mentioned in the Seventh Report, was touched on, and GARBO, introduced in Chapter 3, was trumpeted as a double-agent of growing significance.1 Thus, at this critical juncture of the war, MI5’s first report after an accumulated period of silence contained very little of substance and only the most fleeting of references to TRICYCLE’s triumphant return to London in September 1943.

  NOVEMBER, DECEMBER AND JANUARY

  During the last three months five new spies have been arrested, one of whom has recently been condemned to death. Three new special agents have been brought to this country and two Spanish saboteurs have been executed in Gibraltar. The Germans have made five attempts at sabotage, most of them unsuccessful.

  Of the spies who have recently been arrested, two are of particular importance. The first is of interest on the grounds that he is a British subject, although of German origin. He was detected in a somewhat unusual way owing to the fact that he was carrying jewellery for which we had been on the look-out as the Germans had promised to send it to one of our special agents in this country. This man, who turned out also to have a spy mission of his own, has now been prosecuted under the Treachery Act and condemned to death.2

  The second spy, Hellmuth, whose arrest has been mentioned in the Press, is of interest from the political point of view. He was arrested while carrying out a mission to Europe for General Ramirez and other extreme Fascist elements in the Argentine Government in collusion with Himmler’s special Secret Service. He had been promised an interview with Himmler, and if possible with Hitler, in order to carry out certain clandestine political and economic negotiations of which the German Embassy in Buenos Aires was unaware. The statements obtained from him by the Security Service have led to noteworthy political developments.

  Considerable political significance also attaches to recent German sabotage attempts in Spain. The main object of the German Sabotage Service recently has been the sabotaging of Italian merchant ships in Spanish ports with some measure of success. An attempt on a British ship was, however, frustrated by the preventive measures of the Security Service. The Germans have, as has been reported in the Press, also attempted sabotage on cargoes of oranges to this country. Four of the bombs which had been placed in the oranges exploded on board ship, and the fifth was finally located in a case of onions in Kettering. This bomb, which was still active and of a formidable character, was dismantled by a member of the Security Service. In view of the attempt by the Spanish Government to deny that the Germans were responsible for this sabotage it is of interest to note that the intact specimen secured at Kettering is clearly of German origin. Two German saboteurs have, moreover, recently been executed at Gibraltar, and it is known that one of them was acting for serving Spanish officers who themselves were working for the Germans. A strong memorandum has been prepared by S
IS and the Security Service, and it is understood that this is being presented to the Spanish Government, which is being pressed to expel from Spain the German saboteurs known to us by name. We have lately obtained from a recently arrived Italian spy information about the organisation which Himmler has prepared to operate sabotage and espionage behind the Allied lines in Italy.3

  Our special agents have also been active. Several new ones have arrived, some with instructions to obtain technical information, and one with a political mission. This was a Yugoslav naval officer whose object was to explore the possibility of gaining sympathy for Germany in British circles on an anti-Communist basis.4

  Two of our long-standing special agents have recently returned to this country after a visit to the Peninsula with large sums of money, detailed and instructive questionnaires, new contacts, and reputations apparently greatly enhanced in the eyes of the Germans.5

  GARBO has been probing German intentions over CROSSBOW. He has been instructed to make arrangements to move out of London, but the Germans do not appear to think that much action will be necessary immediately.

  Some light has been thrown on morale in the Nazi party by the confession of another character who recently fell into our hands. He was engaged in arranging to transport to the Argentine by submarine securities and cash to be invested in real estate for certain high Nazi officials.

  1st February 1944

  * * *

  The reference to a German sabotage device defused in Kettering was one of the more remarkable episodes of the war, and created great controversy within the Security Service. Guy Liddell provded the details on 2 February 1944:

  Victor Rothschild rang up to say that he had just dismantled a bomb found in a case of onions at Kettering. This bomb consisted of a number of blocks of TNT, and two German time clocks enclosed in plastic. Owing to some mechanical defect, the clocks had stopped, but on getting a bump in course of transit from the docks one of them had re-started and would have gone off in seven days. Meanwhile, Peter Hope has been ringing up from Newcastle. He says that the Chief Constable is slightly annoyed that he was never told about the explosions in the orange ships Stanhope and Haywood. He is worried about some 3,000 cases which are still on the quay and also about the remaining 7,000 cases which have been distributed throughout the UK down to retailers. He was thinking of communicating with Home Office in order that all these cases could be traced and ripped open. I told him to calm the Chief Constable down since we had reason to think that there would be no further explosions (ISOS had disclosed that there were five bombs. Three went off on the Stanhope and one on the Haywood. The discovery of the fifth, therefore, account for them all). I told Hope that he could also tell the Chief Constable that the chances of anymore bombs going off now was remote owing to the time factor, and that in any case the public had been warned in the press and would doubtless report any suspicious circumstances to the police.